


The Wind-up Cinnamon Bird

by Cyrelia_J



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Anal Sex, Asexual Character, Asexuality Spectrum, Developing Relationship, Drama, First Time, Jealousy, Kissing, M/M, POV Alternating, Rare Pairings, jack's stream of conscious thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 03:14:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17195450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyrelia_J/pseuds/Cyrelia_J
Summary: Prompted by the rest of the Jack Pack to meet the Cardassian who's captured Julian's attention, Jack's curiosity leads him into the shop and to an encounter that he'll never forget. Garak, for his part can't help the initial comparisons, which soon lead to something much more..."Of course Bashir was in a way at the heart of it because Patrick declared that there was a something there in that circumspect Patrick way and Lauren promised to follow the trail of breadcrumbs through the forest should he so need but… Jack was curious to know what manner of man a creature such as Bashir might fancy.And it was in the midst of that soliloquy on the matter of Bashir’s self imposed limitations and cowardice that the Cardassian, “call me Garak”, asked him if he’d chanced to read The Never Ending Sacrifice."





	The Wind-up Cinnamon Bird

**Author's Note:**

> So help me if I remember who got me stuck on this idea. Well anyway, this started out as a silly Garak and Jack fucking to spite Julian but in the end actually turned into something completely different. Maybe better to say a bond started with Julian but then turned to something else. I actually surprised myself by how much I liked this pair so hopefully everyone else will give it a chance :)
> 
> Thank you all for reading and C&C is always welcome! And of course be on the lookout for Jack's love of quoting ;)

Jack doesn’t always bite his fingers. They’re perpetually in his mouth but not always bitten, not twice shy but rather… licked, sucked, carefully laved over skin as a distraction to draw the salt to the forefront of his tongue and hold the attention of his olfactory senses. Because Jack, for as long as he could remember following The Procedure, could not only smell the air but _taste_ it as well. It’s an unwelcome distraction - an unpleasant distraction - to have that other sense supplying information, feeding the line to his brain, making another association to a creature that he would sooner forget. He’s also learned that the associated word in the brain isn’t always the Correct word, but it’s the word that is supplied. And so Julian Bashir with a slight subtle Scenting is a crisp and sinus clearing _mint_ when Jack allows himself that brief moment of additional Knowing to enter into the equation.

 

Jack _hates_ mint.

 

There is a certain allure to the wipe clear of the mouth, the eraser to the palate, the invasive _cold_ that pervades with the melted peppermint over the tongue but Jack has never liked the cold. He likes the shiver of a soft warm whisper to his ear, Sarina sometimes resting her head on his shoulder, breathing against his neck, slow and hot until he shuts his eyes and sinks into a few blissful moments of Restful sleep, his toes curling in his shoes. But he doesn’t like the feel of cold burning skin, wind whipping face, flaying skin, the numbness that overstimulates the nerves. If Jack should fall to the flames then let them be true, real, heat, fire, molten running over his skin hot as he can stand it.

 

And that’s why he loves Cinnamon.

 

Cinnamon is what he Scented when he allowed that tentative trip of the tongue out standing in the shop pacing, Restless, not knowing what it was that he was searching for. The shop being Garak’s Clothier’s and the trip was an odd 80 days around the universe to because a little bird, a little wind up Patrick bird told him that there was something that Jack needed to see and needed to know and there it was when he entered, stopping him frozen.

 

It was Cinnamon thick and dusty hot, capsaicin to the back of his throat as he paused the memorized introduction stepping across the invisible line dividing safety from daring and stomped a little harder as much as he dared to cause the jerk of of a black head. And maybe maybe Jack Stared at the Cardassian proprietor too long before coming to the conclusion that this was Absolutely [as Lauren had hinted] Bashir’s Gatsby, imagining in his mind a passel of Bashir’s _beautiful little fools_ infecting the station with their big stupid foreheads and blank idealistic eyes.

Lauren had always maintained that it would be better for Gatsby and Nick to fornicate and save the lot of them but what did Lauren know anyway?

 

“I’m a _[vascular plant native to Ba’azen]?”_ The Cardassian spoke, the reverie broken, the response already off track from what was planned… Because Jack had said that out loud with the wrong emphasis and _ga’zee_ in Kardasi was a type of fern and Jack had to sigh and start over with the speech he had carefully memorized, when the Cardassian informed him that he would much rather Jack continue his “riveting and amusing analysis of the sad state of affairs that he perceived as the relationship between doctor and tailor”. Jack blinked at him and snapped that he wasn’t there to discuss _Bashir_.

 

But… lately it all seemed to come back full circle, the _uroboros_ eating its own tail _ad infinitum_ since he had chanced upon the mutant who was anything but. Jack counted another smug stupid smile every time that Bashir entered his thoughts and it was a counter that Irritated him. Of course Bashir was in a way at the heart of it because Patrick declared that there was a _something_ there in that circumspect Patrick way and Lauren promised to follow the trail of breadcrumbs through the forest should he so need but… Jack was curious to know what manner of man a creature such as Bashir might fancy.

 

And it was in the midst of that soliloquy on the matter of Bashir’s self imposed _limitations_ and cowardice that the Cardassian, “call me Garak”, asked him if he’d chanced to read _The Never Ending Sacrifice._

 

 _“One must bow to one’s lot. It is the will of Heaven, and one cannot struggle against fate,”_ Jack had quoted The Romance of the Three Kingdoms with a sigh, recalling as he read it the simple and straightforward expectation/reward of the State. He moved to sit on the counter then, knees drawn up, writing out invisible ink finger over the surface the characters to express the meaning in the ancient human script. There was a smile to that when he looked up, which prompted Jack to stop and try to Understand if something was Incorrect about the situation when Garak asked him if he didn’t object to the lack of “freedom” in the character’s choices in the novel. “ _Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom,_ ” he answered with a wave of his hand and a snort, finger back in his mouth because that Cinnamon was distracting.

 

It was all very Confucian, Jack continued because that was Obvious to him and Garak was… actually Listening to him in the way that usually only Sarina tended to. He didn’t smile though because that _didn’t_ please him one bit as he went on to say that the only difference of course being _ren_ as he couldn’t quite think of the best translation, finding modern Kardasi thoroughly inadequate for such concepts drumming fingers on the counter and glaring at a woman looking to interrupt him with a Pointless question on a scarf that clearly made her look sallow.

 

Jack said as much before indicating the royal blue and the adjacent green with a mumble, remembering the annoying lack of proper color description in Andorran because there were a million shades of blue but _green_ on the other hand-

 

“Lacking?” Garak asked, not missing the original track in the conversation at all once the sale was complete with a very… challenging posture. That was curious because Jack was used to steps back, wariness usually displayed, (the Andorran woman absolutely stepping further away than necessary, Jack felt though didn’t exactly object to with her vile Lavender perfume) and here was where Jack would cross his arms retreat no threat no threat but… instead Jack felt his head tipping, tongue a curious mirror of Garak’s as he again gave into that temptation that… Scenting that he tended to avoid.

 

Cinnamon, stronger cinnamon - which Lauren would say wasn’t the Correct word but for Jack, Cinnamon wasn’t just a spice, wasn’t just a peppery powder it was.. a certain seizing sensation on the tongue, to the senses that stopped the breath without sealing the lungs in a vice, that burned, that made one _take notice_ and… and it wasn’t a Human scent that he’d ever noticed, Bashir’s cold cold Mint the closest polar opposite approximation but… Jack slid off the counter with a smile because the Cinnamon was _exciting_ and Garak was Absolutely Challenging him to prove him wrong without that sense of inadequacy, wanting to engage him as an Equal without the restraint of holding back for a Basic.

“Mmhm, _Lacking_ ,” he confirmed with an excited bite of his finger, both of them now behind the counter as he leaned in Wickedly, meeting a sugar sparkle of eyes in return.

 

“By all means,” The Cheshire Cardassian purred, “tell me more.”

 

And so he did.

 

\---

 

Now Garak had always imagined that if he ever met a truly honest man then he could say with certainty that he’d chanced upon the most boring creature the universe had birthed into existence.

 

That is until he met one Jonathan J. Merriweather.

 

It was fascinating to consider that depending on the terms one used, both Julian Bashir and Jonathan J. Merriweather [or rather “Jack”] could be described in such a matter as to render one indistinguishable from the other. Garak considered this as Jack stepped up to him with an excited nod of the head declaring with such beautiful conviction that the State’s outlaw of high Kardasi had irreparably damaged the freedom of expression and had irreparably crippled the ability of the Cardassian people to properly convey spirituality. Bite finger, bite knuckle, concluded with a darting out of the tongue that said to Garak that he was absolutely engaging in a habit distinctly not human half hidden discreetly behind that hand like a Lacorian Orphan sniffing around for dropped refuse.

 

And so, if one were to say that they had encountered by chance, a charming human augment with curly brown hair, stunning hazel eyes, and an infectious energy sprinkled with a pinch of provocative if biased conversationalist and left it there, one could easily mistake Julian for Jack, doctor for patient, “passing” for “aberrant”. But then an encounter such as this, where Garak could hardly imagine Julian arguing that freedom was a construct, circling him, dancing around like a desert cat waiting to strike at the vulnerable lizard out of a sense of playfulness, only further illustrated those differences in a way which so many others on station seemed incapable of seeing. Then again, those fools also saw danger where Garak merely saw that same cornered wild cat trapped in the city walls with nowhere to run when confronted.

 

 _Is this what you believe people here see now when they look at you, my dear doctor? Is this the reason for your newfound restraint in spite of your declarations that you’re now free to be yourself? You seem to think that being yourself means regurgitating numbers and figures like a computer and yet here is a man who understands exactly who and what he is and believes himself to be without limit or peer only daring the rest of us to prove him wrong, looking for it, longing for that challenge._ And, if Garak were being honest, beyond the curiosity of getting to know “another of Julian’s kind”, to see the “mad augment” as he’d heard whispered, Garak couldn’t help but notice far less high minded things when the man entered and looked right at him before dropping his eyes with a pull of his hand to his mouth.

 

Like the fact that he had very nice looking hands, soft skin, long fingers that were delicate but still masculine, and a searching intensity to his stare [when choosing to engage in eye contact] that was quite tempting.

 

That was to say nothing of his mouth.

 

Garak could picture Lok telling him with a click of his tongue that he had such an unfortunate type, and once Garak might have pictured the trope of the young idealistic and naive doctor (though he found in truth Kelas Parmak to be anything but under that dull Northerner’s facade) but he’d come to realize as he watched Jack start in Kardasi with a rather stilted greeting and end with a grumble on his and Julian’s perceived relationship that the “type” in fact was keyed to those possessing a certain energy, an impropriety about them that this Jack had in excess. Garak may have perhaps smiled a touch wide as hips settled on the counter indiscriminately and Jack tipped his head at him, just the tiniest tease of neck beneath sweater and sweater.

 

Jack, Garak noted had a rather fine neck and exceptionally pale skin much like Kelas.

 

Very unlike Julian.

 

Garak was all too aware of the unfairness of comparison between a man who’d been a prisoner of his own facade but otherwise free in action versus a man who’d been locked away in body but never forced to be anything other than and yet-

 _“_ _Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams,”_ Garak heard echoing as Jack had seemingly returned to the amusing subject of Garak and Julian’s relationship as he perceived it and nearly laughed. And yet he saw that Jack had turned his attention to the Promenade, watching as by some happenstance in the distance where Garak would have only imagined Cardassian eyes could spot, said doctor sharing a laugh with a young woman.

 

The finger bit harder, the eyes narrowing, and Garak realized what a sad thing it was to behold another staring the stare of longing for what one might never have.

 

He deliberately chose to ignore the fact that the same expression may have made its way onto his face as well a time or two in the last 5 years. His exile was certainly not doing him any favors.

 

“If the crowds are making you uneasy,” Garak offered deliberately misreading that anxious body language as Jack’s head snapped back to look at him warily, “perhaps I might close a bit early so we can continue our discussion in private. I don’t imagine that there will be many more customers today, and you would do well to note that to a Cardassian, a good conversation is worth far more than Ferengi latinum.”

“Worthy?” Jack repeated looking at him with a look mirroring Bashir’s once precious pained expression of innocence being exposed to every evil that ever existed. Garak chose not to correct the slight misspeak from Jack as he smiled and put his hands on his shoulders, the invitation a mirror of another first meaning many years ago.

 

Jack started just the same, the muscles jumped strong but with a strength held back greater than Julian’s, a gasp, a breath but then a relax, a melt, a long breath out as Jack’s eyes continued staring out at Julian.

“They didn’t… tell me where I can go, didn’t tell me what might alert the hounds, set the bells to ringing set… set Bashir to come looking so I should probably tell him and you should know that so I don’t know why you’d even make a suggestion because Bashir will probably say no anyway… Unless that was just the game, the trap, and you knew that and I can’t think of any other reason that you’d… make an offer like that hm.”

Somehow Garak had only dimly considered the possibility of Julian ever knowing of such an invitation, let alone anything further that said invitation may lead to.

 

He too watched Julian with that lovely young ensign and squeezed Jack’s shoulders again.

 

“Now what did I just tell you about Cardassians and conversation?” Garak asked the hypothetical, moving away as projected aplomb warred with his own sort of anxious nausea. Anxious for what he was only half sure. “I’ll tell him then and nobly shoulder all the responsibility in this case,” Garak said, feeling his heart start to race even faster.

“He’s not going to agree!” Jack called after him with another allusion to some sort of Earth flower he recognized, that paranoid censure only prompting Garak to be absolutely sanguine in response when he finally came into Julian’s line of sight.

 

He never did know quite when to turn around, as Lok always said.

 

\---

  


Jack didn’t like the bright lights and the cold of the station. He hated the sounds and he hated the alien smells and tastes.

 

Garak’s quarters are warm enough for him to take his sweater off. Garak’s quarters are dark and have a faint static to them that clears his head and starts a small counter ticking of a desert at night the small grains of sands shifting for seconds of Comfort. Garak’s quarters have that familiar Cinnamon taste all around mingle with clove, dashes of vanilla and a hint of salted Caramel on the tongue slipping down his throat. Yes, Comfort of that particular sort if the only word that he could use. Jack doesn’t feel it often.

 

He doesn’t feel skin often and never scales, but the scales of the backs of Garak’s hands beneath his thumbs make him shiver Good shivers as his head sinks to the side of the sofa back and he breathes deeply shoulders relaxing. Garak had offered the alcoholic beverage to relax but Jack doesn’t drink stimulants or depressants and the Old yowling pussycat used to warn from the pile of drunken blankets to never drink from the fairy realm lest one remain a prisoner. But he thinks oddly that he wouldn’t mind being a prisoner of the Lizard king in his heavenly humid lizard palace.

 

Jack almost thinks as they hold hands and softly Converse (new word Good word), that he would gladly spend a hundred years in the undersea turtle kingdom and if the world passed by then… Then his feeling warm air on his bare skin as the sleeves of his maroon sweater are rolled up are worth every moment. Garak’s fingers are to his pulse making him breathe more deeply and slowly as he matches motions and respirations while Garak breathes faster and harder all the while speaking low and soft of the merits of lips painted blue versus red.

 

Jack has never been fond of debate finding the necessary evil of speaking to convey information only an unpleasant means to an end but… the Kardasi tongue rolls easier, speaks more succinctly, more susurrations and the sounds don’t stick quite so badly. Still, he’d prefer the silence of signs and that visual expression that doesn’t require he borrow so heavily from others.

 

Maybe the Cardassians have a version he’s not aware of, he thinks as he thinks of Lauren….

 

Lauren’s lips are often red where Sarina’s lips are usually pale pink and Patrick’s anywhere between the two depending on whether or not he’s had a cherry sucker, a sucker for cherry candy is Patrick. Lauren loves cinnamon like Jack and sometimes the two swap cinnamon red hots between their mouths until lips tingle and Lauren’s nails dig into his knees and her breathing is much like Garak’s is now with her eyes looking at his mouth while he says if she really needs That Thing that badly he could probably probably do _something_ satisfactory. She always declines and he’s always relieved by that because for her, for Sarina, for Patrick he’d do anything but-

 

Garak is looking at his mouth in that same speculative way and Jack sighs, letting go of those nice warm hands.

 

He can’t do this because even if Garak _wasn’t_ Bashir’s Gatsby, there are those particulars, those expectations that he can’t…

 

Time stops a moment for a memory ghost.

 

_“What do you mean you’re closing early?”_

_“With_ _Jack_ _?”_

_“You can’t be serious?”_

_“This is a new low even for you Garak.”_

_“I don’t think you realize…”_

_“You’re making a big mistake…”_

_“...some childish game you’re playing…”_

_“One of us is just as good as another is that it?”_

 

Low hissed low so angry but the mutant heard as he dared to stare at the bright lights which may have been the sun and shut his eyes until angry silence stomping off, and a hand settled on his shoulder again with a smile. A _lying_ smile as Garak said nothing more on it and Jack… followed him.

 

Jack follows him now, Bashir’s voice ringing in his head, taking that hand back, Garak looking like he’s waiting for Jack to say something else but Jack has always been more at ease with the silence.

“Your… reactions don’t seem to be the same as I’m accustomed to with human lovers,” Garak says carefully while Jack’s thumb maps the scales of the back of his hand again, counting scales, counting the soft little wrinkles before deciding that he’d like to know if Cardassian skin tastes like his own.

 

“They won’t be,”he says quickly, repeating so it’s understood and Garak doesn’t ask any more questions. Jack just lets his lips pass over knuckles, nipping because somehow he forgot about that compulsion lost in his thoughts but Garak hisses not… not seeming pained as Jack nips and breathes, skin to the skin of his lips, scales drawn in, sucked nips to the tip of Garak’s thumb an interesting study and there’s… something thrilling in thinking that he might please Bashir’s former lover better than Bashir.

“Because of your… enhancements?”

“No.” And even if that lack of sexual attraction was somehow due to The Procedure they were all him, all the same, all cells assimilated anyway as they should be. Jack is Jack and everything about Jack is Jack.

 

Garak is very warm, Jack thinks as he sinks into him.

 

\---

 

Jack is warm, very warm, hot, and his skin is smooth, not sweaty, not perspiring in the Cardassian heat and humidity as the sweater, as the white undershirt comes off, followed by the rest on both their parts, and Garak stares hard, not quite certain of the protocols involved with humans who seem to lack certain sexual functionality. He thinks a moment that it might be akin to an android mimicking his breathing, mimicking his gestures except…

 

Jack’s mouth on his skin is questing, eager in a way one might be for the first taste of juice from the sweet southern berries at harvest. Jack smiles at him satisfaction blooming when Garak’s ridges flush dark, a pleased, excited whisper to his skin a “yess yesss…” when Garak moans, when Garak’s teeth sink deep to the ridges of his shoulder, when Jack’s nails rake, “nicenicemmhmmmhm…” Jack doesn’t sweat, doesn’t whimper when pink nipples are teased, doesn’t instinctively part legs when a hand slips up the inside of a thigh, doesn’t push against his palm but rather pulls Garak on top of him like he weighs nothing, a tangle of limbs two undulating serpents writhing against each other when Jack finally kisses him in that messy human way.

 

It’s very messy, very tactile, the scratch of Jack’s mustache to Garak’s face a new and novel sensation as he finds his early thought comparisons of Julian, of the sun and the moon to fall away as it is utterly impossible to marry summer to a star where one is a season and one is a celestial body in flux in a much different manner. Jack’s tongue meets his along with teeth biting his lip, along with hands not so much groping as surveying, as kneading at his back, at working to measure and make him groan, each press of fingers, each rough squeeze of a thigh in direct response to the rock of Garak’s body before Jack lifts him again, surely a comical picture of Garak straddling his lap.

 

Oh but to Garak that strength and flow of muscle and body is anything _but_ comical.

 

Jack looks up at him mouth on throat, as if considering a great question looking down between the two of them where Garak has only begun to allow himself to evert. He feels the slight stiffness of Jack’s prick that seems to register more nuisance as Jack bites his finger and closes his eyes.

“I… we’re… I can’t… I mean I could it… it _works_ the physiological response is is… you can see that of course you can see that, shuttup Jack.”

“I assure you,” Garak says sounding much more breathless than he would have imagined, “that intercourse isn’t a necessity for a satisfying evening.”

“Is that what you said to Bashir?”

 

The lie comes easily, automatically.

And then it stops.

“In spite of your colorful speculations, I’m afraid I’ll have to correct that one, Jhasa” he says, finding the translation of Jack to Kardasi a more fitting endearment. Endearing to watch that not quite compute a moment of a blink before Jack’s eyes look up at him impossibly large before looking down again, a faint jitter of his leg, two long slow blinks.

“You’ve never engaged in intercourse with Bashir?”

“I have not.” _I want what he doesn’t have_ , radiates so beautifully, so painfully on his face that when Jack moves his thumb to tell him as Garak knew he would the moment the question was asked, he’s almost tempted to save them both and refuse.

 

“Then you could you know…”

 

_You’re just two pathetic fools using each other, circling around Julian like captured satellites, like dead rocks around green and blue hues._

 

“In me…” he mumbles as if the thought had only ever occurred to him just now. “That would work better hm...”

 

Jack really does have lovely hazel eyes, has thick auburn curls mussed and nothing like Julian’s, has slim hips with just a soft curve to his flank, has strong thighs, has pink lips that party very very prettily when he breathes hard, that darken nicely when he bites them, has a trembling nervous body that says he’s absolutely never done this before, in a far more honest way than even his words. Garak has always found humans to place a ridiculous stock in “purity” when experience has always been far more enticing to Garak but… the temptation to sink into that quivering flame and hold it is so very stupidly self destructive.

 

So of course Garak says yes and takes his hand, leading them both to his modest bed.

 

 _Not so modest now,_ he hears Julian tease in his head and only squeezes Jack’s hand harder in response.

 

\---

 

Garak has never been with Bashir. Which shouldn’t mean anything because after all Jack has never been with anyone period where clearly Garak has had as Casanova one conquest after another, he imagines as good as he tastes, as strong the thighs, as haunting the eyes, if one were to lay out all the pleasant tactile sensations of Garak’s body in Jack’s hands he would imagine the Cardassian to have no shortage of lovers for that sort of thing. But somehow _not Bashir_ which would make this a thing that’s his and only his, the one thing that he has that Bashir doesn’t.

 

The thought isn’t an Arousing one but something drives him with a much greater need.

 

Garak tells him what is Necessary as he lays back on the bed and Jack straddles that bare body wide, a pleasant stretch of his thighs spread open over Garak’s hips at what Jack thinks is just wide enough to be Good but not so wide as to be an encumbrance. He’s sure to let Garak know as the small bottle is passed that his hips have an exceptionally pleasing width and his body an acceptable settling beneath him. Garak doesn’t thank him but he says “you’re welcome” anyway as he asks why the stretching is necessary if the everted sex organ is as naturally slick as it appears to be.

 

He realizes it when the first finger slips in and there’s a stretch that the hole naturally holds much tighter than he would’ve thought.

 

Oh.

 

Well of course it does right? And  he hears Patrick in his head telling him that’s a stupid question. Jack tells Patrick to be quiet because no one asked him anyway.

 

“Are you sure that you wouldn’t rather I tend to that?” Garak asks prompting Jack to ask why on Earth Garak thinks a _strange hand_ would be more effective than his own while Garak counters that it’s a strange but _practiced_ hand and there’s… a certain feeling of Garak’s hands on his hips, a possessiveness, that Jack never imagined nor pictured in conjunction with himself that he finds he likes. He doesn’t see a logical argument to that but he’s learned tonight that Cardassians enjoy the arguing, enjoy those little snips that people tend not to like from him.

 

So Jack draws himself up as he works the second finger in and tells him that he certainly knows his own orifices and decides that this is Pointless and it doesn’t particularly matter if it hurts as Garak warns. He doesn’t imagine it to be different than any other physiological reaction of nerves anyway and he watches Garak lick his lips, feels Garak’s hands tighten on his hips as there’s a murmur to relax which is stupid because between the stretch and friction and angle it’s going in one way or another so Garak can just let him do this already and he doesn’t know why anyone finds all of this hassle interesting and he’d much rather go back to just warm kissing and-

 

And it hurts.

Definitely hurts.

But then it’s the best feeling he’s ever felt in his life.

 

Not at once, but there’s a slide in him registering stretch registering a foreign invader and a thing but there are so many other things taking his attention anyway from pain that means little more than his broken bones from trying to fly and… and broken bones didn’t undulate in him, didn’t have the ground looking up at him with blue eyes, didn’t have the Earth moving into him like… like this as Garak moves his hips, as Jack moves his, as Jack bends over and slides against him because there is a _person_ joined with him, a person touching him, real hands, a real mouth open saying _his name_ breathless like _he’s_ the cinnamon ice cream.

 

His head swims bent over as Garak tells him how he feels like the personified human concept of heaven against his mouth and he wriggles and draws another groan to his mouth and It moves in his deeper and deeper that… stake driving into his heart, that connection, hands on his hips, hands on his ass, up to his back bringing him down as Garak seems to be driven mad beneath him by Jack doing nothing but breathing into his mouth biting lips and letting his hips match Garak’s rhythm, as he feels himself clench, spasm, as that feel of fire between his legs settles to something dull and low that aches, but doesn’t hurt the way it does sometimes unexpectedly.

 

It hurts until it doesn’t hurt and Jack asks if it’s possible for Garak to go in deeper than he already is and he… feels himself tipping back and away, back arched, searching for that angle himself, head back bowed, dizzy and up up, his name the call of the stars that’s a fantastic kaleidoscope behind his eyes and he doesn’t Understand how Bashir couldn’t want to feel like this in motion matching another body like this, being filled, being warm, so warm all over that his toes curl and his thighs shake where muscles usually never fail but it’s… floating and buried warm and a perfect living death or as Neruda had written in words birthed to new life now _in this form in which I am not nor are you, so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, so close that your eyes close with my dreams…_

 

He thinks that he could float forever like this half in delirious sleep dreaming like Endymion like the _endless fountain of immortal drink_ breathless, deathless, swallowing words, counting thrusts into the hundreds the counter a halestorm falling down cratering the earth, and half sobbing as he brings a finger to his mouth to bite hard only to have his wrist yanked down as Garak begs him to look at him. Begs. Him. Begs and Jack thinks he begs back not to stop even as length throbs and rubs something especially sensitive that unsettles That Part but in a much different way and not so Unpleasant that it can’t be ignored in favor of the tingle at the base of is spine and the drive drive into him.

 

People don’t like Jack looking at them don’t want it, don’t ask, don’t beg and so when that entreaty passes his ears, the world spins bright as he opens his eyes and looks down in the dim lighting to Garak’s blue eyes with a _“why do you want me to… why are you… why… why am I…”_

 

 _“...in you…”_ reaches his ears faintly as the drums beat louder like the Master of ancient lore _pa pa pa pum pa pa pa pum_ staccato as he gasps a yes feeling tension beneath, feeling heat in him rushed out in thick pulses until he feels it run down the inside of his thighs wet and slick some signal of completion that he… doesn’t Understand, but doesn’t need to because this is warm and nice and Garak could stay locked in him forever while the sun and moon shift in the sky and Jack stops moving so frantically and just… enjoys the living pulse beating second to his before it finally slides out leaving him… unsure of what to do now that its left.

 

 _“The memory of you emerges from the night around me,”_ He quotes again, realizing that he hasn’t thought of Bashir in at least the last ten minutes thirteen seconds.

Until he does.

And Jack finds that he doesn’t particularly miss it as much as he thought he might. He thinks he’s supposed to smile. He can do that, but then the facial muscles make him realize that he already has been smiling. Oh. Well… well good.

He likes having something to smile for.

\---

There isn’t a thunderclap from Jack. Kelas always described that peak as the clap of thunder across the wide open air of the Steppe at night- the winds building up battering the sides of the insulated tents under the roar comes followed by the barrage of rain and hailstones, sometimes “raining dry” as they called it, the moisture running off or simply seeming to evaporate before the calm came again. There isn’t a thunderclap as Garak feels his release spilling out of Jack messy and warm, only the absolutely awful look of marvel on the face of a man that he would have sworn up until this moment was absolutely nothing like Julian Bashir. For just a moment he sees the honest expression, the look of a young fool utterly enamoured with something stupid and impossible and he can’t help but sigh.

“This feels very messy,” Jack declares looking down at him before his face drops nearly like a stone to Garak’s only to let their foreheads touch as they just _breathe_ , Jack having no idea of how precious an intimacy this is. “Is this it or or do I wait and start moving again?” he asks, leaving Garak to think with lusty horror that Jack may very well go all night if Garak were to suggest it. A part of him pictures in a mad moment Jack and Julian wickedly intertwined on this bed all night back and forth never tiring, all for his greedy eyes. Guls, this was a bad idea.

“Typically,” he says breathless, Jack a nice _warm_ weight, “one considers the climax to cease those subsequent stimulated motions,” as Jack _clenches_ and shifts his hips and even wriggles which makes a nice bit of friction to his _chufa_.

“Then wouldn’t it be better not to… to do that? I mean if you didn’t… didn’t…” deep breath and a yawn “keep going if you didn’t mmhm.” And Garak can’t help but absently stroke his flank, very soft, handful of a flank and he supposes that given Jack’s nature he won’t be returning the favor. _Why would you even consider it, Elim? At the core, you’re merely seeking a warm Julian like body where you can’t have Julian. A warm convenient body who’ll be leaving soon without any messy entanglements._

“There are some who would consider that peak to be the primary objective,” Garak murmurs, feeling his _prUt_ retract lazily, content in simple ways that its master will likely never realize.

This was a foolish idea because even as the overlay of imagined similarity passes and Jack looks at him with uncertain frown, a tilt of his head and a compulsive biting of his thumb. It was a foolish idea born of the petty spite thinking that Julian would feel some sort of primitive rivalry that would spur… _Spur what Elim? Him to come barging in here and declaring under no circumstances are you to bed his “dark doppleganger” followed by some torrid fall into his arms?_ Julian has been an absolutely rotten influence on him, Garak decides sourly. He also decides that he should see to their clean up and as amicable a parting of ways as can be managed under the circumstances.

“That’s not the objective,” Jack declares, sitting back and looking at him open and vulnerable, that ridiculous human organ between his legs still undisturbed and tranquil as Jack crosses his arms holding his elbow in one hand. Garak raises a brow ridge, supposing that Jack would have a different view on the matter. “That’s the biological imperative if we were… were mating to produce offspring but we’re not so that’s wrong.” Flat, honest, defiant, and so certain in that conviction that nothing should move it. It’s a challenge and Garak finds a hand sliding back, back behind where legs still split over his, where the body once split, where he drove in so deep and his finger slides back in sure that must hurt, must be sensitive, unused to that violation.

“Perhaps you should tell me why I’m wrong then, Jhasa,” Garak teases until he’s not just teasing, and a second finger is going in hugged just as possessively by the body surrounding it. Tense, quivering, hissing deep breath, head tips back, body slick with sweat, throat very lovely, neck the delicate pale column of a human though the body be modified like a ancient dragon to break bones beneath its heated claws and Garak thinks this is one of the stupidest, stupidest things he’s ever done, lost sight of the goal if the only aim was to spur Julian’s jealousy but-

 _“The warm bodies shine together in the darkness…”_ Quoted, the cadence changes, the different halting pattern, not the same as Jack’s intermittent stutter step but rather the pause of one translating one language to another as only an exceptionally gifted individual could. _“The hand moves to the center of the flesh,”_ another pause, Garak’s fingers already in the center of the flesh, in Jack’s center pushing up into him with Jack moving back slowly like languid sands shifting in the desert at night beneath the silken scales of a serpent hunting its prey. _“The skin trembles in happiness and the soul comes joyful to the eye…”_ And Garak wonders as Jack breathes deeply, gasps around that finger, the other arm still encircling his middle like a makeshift cocoon, caterpillar clinging to a high treetop to become the moth seeking the moon, if there is not such a thing as a sensual zealot- a fervor for the act, for the intimacy it brings as Jack’s weight settled on him slides gloriously over his sensitive scales like his only goal is to bring every scale to meet skin it hasn’t yet acquainted itself with.

 

 _“Yes, yes... that's what I wanted…”_ The body makes an argument that even Garak’s gifted tongue is unable to match at least for this moment. _“I always wanted…” to be close to someone without expectation… “I always wanted...” to be warm, even in the dark, especially in the dark...  “to return... to the body… where I was born..._ _”_ Jack looks at him, the words whispered, the switch in the end to the high Kardasi so that the implied “mother” isn’t for the familial, but for the blessed state herself. Jack looks at him and mumbles self consciously, eyes dropping down between them, that he isn’t Bashir, and Garak understands just as Jack understands far more about exile than he would ever want Julian to know, that no, the two are hardly comparable.

 

Of course this is going to end stupidly, shortly, possibly with much ethical proselytizing, Garak supposed as he smiles, and knows that Jack is going to be anything _but_ conciliatory in the face of opposition.

“I’m glad you’re not him,” he says not even sure himself if that’s a lie while Jack raises an assessing eyebrow to try and determine the veracity of a such a claim himself. He looks like he wants to say something further, but instead double blinks suddenly, the entire time having never been entirely still, until now, when he goes still, quiet, causing a moment of alarm as he blinks again, hand dropping from his mouth, much like a wind up bird that Julian described from a human fairy tale, the barrels worn down until it could no longer sing and therefore must sleep.

 

_“Of course the Emperor was quite taken with the artificial bird because it was encrusted with the finest jewels, played on demand the same song, the same delicate melody and belonged only to him. He’d banished the real nightingale from the court you recall but the artificial bird couldn’t play forever and so it went once a year, until old and ill he begged for it to sing for him once more as Death came for him. It didn’t of course, it couldn’t. But that was when the true nightingale returned and banished death with her beautiful song, and the Emperor knew as she said to him, that she could not be his alone but would sing for fisherman and king alike, her beautiful song, free and pure._

_“I heard that story as a child once and I always fancied myself much like that poor mechanical creature… carefully constructed to play for the Emperor, to do nothing but look pretty and sing better than any other creature in the land because that was why I was created. And then one day I suppose I to would break down, barrels worn, broken and sad and stop working, kept on a shelf all nicely, poor Julian. Sometimes I feel like a wind up bird but I… I always wanted to be like the real nightingale. I always wanted to fly and sing whatever I pleased and only return to the palace as my heart desired, not because I was summoned to perform for the Emperor. I actually… always hated that story… Because everyone, even little children know that the real bird is far better than the useless ornament.”_

 

“Not everyone, my dear,” he whispers with a small smile.

 


End file.
